This Handicap Can Be Cured

It's the Sanford resident who listens to the pharmacist extra carefully -- as if he weren't going to be able to read the medicine's warning label because it's in a doctor's hard-to-read scrawl.

It's the Kissimmee job seeker who asks to fill out the state Job Service form at home -- where she supposedly left her reading glasses.

It's the Orlando laborer who drives by a street sign slowly -- as if he were reading it letter by letter.

It is a basic handicap that adults all through Central Florida quietly hide: They cannot read. They are among the one in every five American adults too weak in English to meet basic needs -- to read simple instructions, to fill out a job application, to write a simple letter.

Some are immigrants who grew up with another language, but many of them passed through Florida schools with their problems ignored. With so many hiding their handicap, people probably don't realize that Florida is typical of the national average. Out of 1.5 million adults in Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Brevard, Volusia and Lake counties, more than 100,000 can't read well enough to do simple daily tasks.

Some try to escape this handicap. Every day thousands of Central Floridians work in small classes and hundreds work in one-on-one tutoring. Many succeed at this frustrating process and many fail. But there's a greater failure: The number of people needing help is at least five times the number of people getting it.

Most functional illiterates are embarrassed. Many doubt they can learn to read adequately. Many don't know where to go for help. Schools have failed them once already. Now it's up to businesses, community groups, volunteers, family and friends to prod them toward a second chance.

One key need is more tutors. It's not just that the poorest readers need one-on-one help. It's also that this spares them what may be extreme embarrassment about admitting their handicap to a small classroom of others. The supply of tutors is crucial: If more non-readers start phoning for help and help isn't available, that discouragement might be worse than doing nothing. To become a tutor takes a commitment -- not a whim. But individuals who have cared enough to share their ability say they received as much as they gave.

Central Floridians should be bombarded with donated ads on billboards and TV encouraging poor readers to get help and prodding others to get involved. Newspapers should -- and the Sentinel will -- tell the ongoing story of illiteracy.

Businesses can do more. Typically, people with reading problems hold jobs with low pay and little potential to advance. Employers could provide these workers with options such as lunchtime tutoring. Businesses could provide recognition and chances at better jobs for employees who succeed at learning to read.

Continental Illinois Bank & Trust Co. is a leader in helping employees master English. The Chicago bank hires some job applicants, for example, whose other qualities offset their weaknesses in English, and then gives them remedial training. Businesses in Central Florida should become just as innovative. They also could join forces to create a council of regional businesses agitating for progress against illiteracy.

Some of the pressure for reform should come from the Florida Literacy Coalition, a new statewide group of public and private literacy groups. But to get going, the coalition urgently needs donated office space in the Orlando area. A business or non-profit group with enough spare office space for two desks and two phones could help a lot by lending it.

Illiteracy is very expensive. An estimated 60 to 80 percent of adults in prisons are functionally illiterate. The total cost of incompetent work, lost tax revenues, remedial teaching, welfare and crime related to this handicap has been estimated at more than $225 billion a year.

But illiteracy is more costly than a simple dollar amount. By stifling opportunity, it erodes American society. By stifling information and understanding, it erodes democracy. It is hard to defeat and reckless to tolerate.